ere very
incorrect. Matter is quite destructible."

"And yet," said Father Waite, "in this universe of constant change,
_something_ endures. What is it but the mind that is God, expressing
itself in such immaterial and permanent things as law, love, life,
power?"

"Exactly," replied Hitt. "But now we have been brought back again to
the question of matter. If we can prove that matter is mental, and not
real substance, we will have established Carmen's premise that
everything is mental. Then there remains but the distinction between
the mind that is God, and its suppositional opposite, as expressed in
human existence. Let us conclude, therefore, that to-night we have
established, at least as a working hypothesis, that, since a thing
existing implies a creator; and since the existent universe, being
infinite, demands an infinite creator; and since a creator can not be
infinite without being at once mind, perfect, eternal, omnipotent,
omniactive, and good, we are fully justified in assuming that the
creator of all things still exists, and is infinite, ever-present
mind. Further than that we are not prepared to go, until we have
discussed the questions of matter and the physical universe and man.
Let us leave those topics for a subsequent meeting. And now I suggest
that we unite in asking Carmen to sing for us, to crown the unity that
has marked this discussion with the harmony of her own beautiful
voice."

A few moments later, about the small upright piano which the Beaubien
had rented for Carmen, the little group sat in reverent silence, while
the young girl sent out through the little room the harmonious
expression of her own inner life, the life that had never left heaven
for earth.

CHAPTER 3

With her exit from the _beau monde_ and her entrance upon the broad
stage of University life, Carmen seemed to have awakened from the
lethargy which her abrupt transition from mediaeval Simiti into the
modern world had occasioned. The static struggle to hold her own
against the rushing currents of materialism had turned at length in
her favor. Her lamp had been kept alight. The lethal influences which
rose about her like stupifying fumes in the courts of fashion had been
lifted and swept away by the fresher and more invigorating breezes
into which her bark had now been drawn.

She plunged into her new work joyously; yet not without a deeper
comprehension of its meaning than that of her fellow-students. She
knew t